Something a bit different on this week’s show. Meet Carol Wyer, blogger, author, and stand-up comedian.
‘She know her audience so well,’ PR expert Ben Cameron told me. ‘She really taps into who her audience is and she has this ability to go out and do whatever it takes to promote her books.’
I trust Ben, so despite the fact I wasn’t sure how useful this would be to my business-book-writing listeners, I interviewed Carol. And it turns out Ben was right: there is SO much good stuff here for Extraordinary Business Book Club listeners – on using humour effectively, on connecting with your readers, and on why it’s OK if you hate your book right now.
LINKS:
Carol’s site: http://www.carolwyer.co.uk/
Carol on Twitter: https://twitter.com/carolewyer
Grumpy Old Menopause: https://grumpyoldmenopause.com/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Alison Jones: Hello, and welcome to the Extraordinary Business Book Club and today, it’s a bit different. I’m here with Carol Wyer. Now, Carol – this is not the biography you normally get at the beginning of the Extraordinary Business Book Club – Carol took up stand-up comedy two years ago and since then she has toured the Midlands with her hit show, Smile While You Still have Teeth, which also opened the Tamworth Literary Festival in 2017. This year she changed genre, she moved to the dark side with a series of detective thrillers and the first one, Little Girl Lost, rated number 2 in the Amazon Kindle charts, entered the USA Today top 150 bestselling books chart, is the 9th best-selling audio book on Audible, has been translated for several foreign markets and has sold over 125,000 copies, which is not half bad. Welcome to the show Carol.
Carol Wyer: Thank you very much.
Alison Jones: I should probably point out, and we will talk about this later on, that Ben Cameron recommended you and thought it would be a real breath of fresh air for the show to have someone come in from a completely different area of writing, so I’m really looking forward to it. He said you had really nailed getting out there doing what needed to be done for your books.
Carol Wyer: Ahh, he’s too kind isn’t he? He’s a lovely man.
Alison Jones: He is a lovely man. So, let’s just go back a little bit, tell us how the whole writing career, and the comedy indeed career, developed. How did you begin and where’s it going?
Carol Wyer: Well, it all goes back a very, very long way. I initially wrote a series of stories for children that taught them French, that was probably where I first started writing. They went into schools and I would go into schools with the books and teach children how to speak French from a very early age. So that, really, was where the whole starting point came for the writing. However, they weren’t immensely successful, it was at the time when you used to have to send off to publishers and you’d end with a book load of rejections and it took quite some time to get them noticed.
So I shelved that for a while. There was another reason that I shelved it and that was because I lost my illustrator and best friend who’d helped me on the books, she unfortunately passed away so I had a break from doing that and I kept up my career which, at the time, was teaching and translating. Then, in 2009, my son, well, he was kicked out of the nest rather than flew from the nest, but as he drove off for the final time I thought, two things. One I though, oh dear that’s a phase of my life that’s now over but I also thought, great, I can turn his room into a writing room and I can do what I’ve always wanted to do and that’s actually start writing for the adult market.
Alison Jones: I do hope he’s not listening to this
Carol Wyer: It made sense, he had a much bigger room than I had, I had this little box room up until then. So, he trundled off with his car with all his belongings and I set about cleaning the room and I started writing for the adult market. At the time, I was 49, I was looking at 50, so a couple of life-changing things had occurred, I’d lost my son and my identify if you like, I didn’t have to be going shopping every Saturday and fill the fridge up every five minutes and do endless bouts of washing for him and so on, and I thought, good, it’s my time I can actually do something that I want to do. I had always wanted to become a full time writer.
So, an idea I’d had was to write a diary on somebody that was also facing 50. I thought maybe there was a market for that, because facing 50 is not an easy task but there are lots of funny things that happen to you as you get older and I thought I would probably be able to incorporate those into a story. I was going to do a diary of a woman facing 50 and I thought no, that’s old hat, everybody’s done those. So, what would somebody facing 50 do? I thought maybe they would set up a blog. Well, at the time, I had no idea what a blog was so it took endless research, I discovered how to set up a blog and did so myself. I called it Facing 50 with Humour and I set up a few posts and I had follower for several months and that was all I had. I knew nothing about it but it gave me an idea of how to set the scene for my character, Amanda Wilson.
What I did, I started to blog the chapters of the book, if you like, so she lived at home with a retired old grumpy husband and this son that had boomeranged back into the nest, there were a few similarities if you like, between her life and mine and I set it all up on the blog and gradually I started to get followers on the blog. Well, after a year I had lots and lots of followers who all loved to hear about Amanda Wilson, thought I was Amanda Wilson and, of course, the stories were getting more and more ridiculous but everybody was loving it and then I took those stories off, I said, right that’s it I’m going to turn it into the book that I’ve always wanted to write and I did and I wrote Miniskirts and Laughter Lines and that was the story of Amanda Wilson and her life facing 50 with all the bloopers and horrible things and funny things that happened to her and her mother that was partying in Cyprus and had got a toyboy and everything else that happened in her life.
The book was self published, I didn’t send it to publishers, I self-pubbed it myself and it did extraordinarily well. I was picked up by Woman’s Own magazine, who found out it was a bestseller and they wrote a feature on me and from there I found my very first publisher. So that’s how it all began.
Alison Jones: That’s brilliant, what I love and I did not expect this actually, is you have just exemplified loads of the themes that we talk about on the show for business book writers as well and so you talk about blogging the book and using that to just find your voice rather than just sitting down in a dark room and writing it and kind of launching it on an unsuspecting world. So, you were building your platform and I love that you said you started with one follower because, of course, everybody does. The first follower, that’s all you need and then you have a platform. That sense of just getting the response and honing, I love the fact that things got more and more ridiculous because obviously you worked out that, that went down well, you were just finding out what works.
Carol Wyer: The blog taught me a huge amount. I learned what my audience wanted through that blog and at the end of the year when I actually published the book, we held a blog party, a launch party online. It’s a lot of hard work to blog, you have to go to lots of fellow bloggers blogs and leave comments and invite them back to yours, I’m not saying it’s easy, I spent a very hard year working at being a good blogger and at the end, when we had the party, the site crashed because so many people came to the party. I set it up so it actually was a house party, so each page of my blog was a room and in each room something was going on and I set it up all myself, I don’t how, to this day, I managed to do it. So, there was a chat room going on in one and then there was a competition where people could put pictures of themselves in mini skirts on another page and there were jokes on another page and each room held a little party. So it was a genuine online party and that’s what launched the book.
So, I can only recommend that you do go into, for anybody, the blogging side definitely, it’s a good platform.
Alison Jones: Do all blog parties end up in the kitchen? Is that how it works?
Carol Wyer: I put all the good things in the kitchen so they did.
Alison Jones: That means bring your own though I imagine, you had to sit there with your own glass of something. I love the idea of a blog party and you just promote that as a whole load of people on the site at the same time having a chat?
Carol Wyer: That’s exactly what it was. I set it up so that lots of other authors would be there in one room, so that your guests could go and talk to those authors so there was that. Then there was a joke room where people were allowed to put down a joke and then the best joke of the day would win a prize and then you would go out to the garden and you could go and get some virtual food, I set up some little gifs and people could go and press on a gif and get virtual food. It was quite crazy but people absolutely loved it and if you talk to any of my followers now, today, they will say that was the best party ever, that they attended and they still remember it.
Alison Jones: I love that, and no hangover?
Carol Wyer: No, no virtual hangover.
Alison Jones: That’s awesome. Now, you say you self published the first book, I mean did you know what you were doing or is it one of those things that you just kind of stumbled into it and you just made it up as you went along and it seemed to work?
Carol Wyer: No, I think everything in my life I have not known anything about. I didn’t know how to use Word so there we are, I had to teach myself to do that as well. No, I knew nothing about self publication at all. I went on to lots of sites and learned what to do and what not to do. What I discovered, having got together my script, was there was a site at the time, I think it’s still going, called You Write On where you submit your first few chapters and, in exchange for offering positive criticisms to other people, they will say what they think about your book and give you some ideas and some help and suggestions. So, before I published it, I submitted it and I read other peoples books and said, oh this is good but that doesn’t work and they offered lots of criticism and help on mine.
So, I re-wrote the first few chapters before I actually did anything about it and then I used that website, which is now Feeder Read, it was You Write On, to publish the paperback version of that book. So, they helped me to do a PDF version of that and upload it and they offered the ability to do a cover as well so I didn’t have to design my own cover and things. So, I actually just learned by tutorials online, that’s how I did it all.
Alison Jones: And you got the right people round you to help you, which is brilliant because lots of business book writers use beta readers because the feedback you get is invaluable, you can’t see your own stuff, you’re too close to it aren’t you?
Carol Wyer: Absolutely, I still, to this day, use beta readers even though I have a publisher, I have editors, I have copy editors, I have proofreaders now, but I still use beta readers before I even submit that manuscript.
Alison Jones: What do you get from them, how does that work?
Carol Wyer: Well from the beta reader you will get, as you say, this opinion of somebody, they’re not necessarily your fan, they will give you a very good, honest opinion. Be careful, I mean obviously you can’t use family or friends because they’re going to be slightly biased or embarrassed to say, well look this is a pile of junk or whatever, so you try and use people that you’ve met online and again that goes back to my blogging days, I mean, from my blogging days I learned how to use Facebook and met people online with Facebook and Twitter and people that were interested in the same subjects and then I basically recruited them, and this is something that you get on to later, is the Smiles Street Team, I know we’re going to talk about that a bit later and some of those people in that were my beta readers for quite a while.
Alison Jones: That’s really interesting, well let’s talk about that now since we’re there, I don’t mind juggling up the questions, it’s absolutely fine. So tell us about the Street Team, it’s a lot of bloggers as well, reviewers. How do you use them and who are they?
Carol Wyer: Right, well initially they were people that followed my blog which, at the time as you said, was Facing 50 with Humour. So, when I was online and they were my friends – my virtual friends because I actually don’t have any real friends, I spend all my time online, I am such a sad person – so, I asked who would be willing to help me out and, I had initially about six or seven people, we made the name up, the Smile Street Team because at the time I was doing a lot of comedy and books and we’d got humour coming. Initially I would make up little packages of things like my business card and I had a book come out called Love Hurts and I brought lots of those individual packs of lovehearts, made up these little goody bags with love hearts, business card, a little bit about the book, few things inside it and I sent out little packages of twenty to my street team and they were literally my street team.
The would go out on the street, they would talk to libraries or anybody that they felt would be interested in my book and say, this is Carol, have a little goody bag and I’ve read her books and they’re great and that’s how it started but, of course, there are only so many goody bags you can keep sending people and as I got bigger and I wrote my books and I’ve now written 15 books, the last few books have been published by Bookouture, and now in my street team we’ve recruited people from individual Facebook groups who are interested in books and so those people have their own book review blogs and so those people are now part of my street team and rather than send them out individual goody bags and say, get out on the streets and say Carol is great, they now know when I’ve got a book coming out, they get advanced copies of it so they’re able to read it way ahead of anybody else.
Then they will review it on their websites and if I have a cover release or if I have a new book coming out, or if there’s something that’s happened, like for example, after this podcast, they will promote that on their sites and on their Facebook pages and in exchange, as I’ve always done, I’ve always offered a prize regularly. So, I’ll have little mini raffles for the guys in the street team and there will be a prize. Again, way back it used to be things like, there’d be a stiletto keyring when I launched Surfing in Stilettos and we raffled it and I’d say, would you like to win this? And if they said yes, we put their names in the hat and then one of those would win it and I’d send it to them.
Alison Jones: That’s absolutely brilliant and this all comes from people who just like what you do and have grown, over the years, to like you, love you, trust you and just want to get you successful because they’ve got a stake in you?
Carol Wyer: Pretty much, I mean, I’ve been amazed at how wonderful and how friendly have been but it goes back to blogging. Blogging is like being in a party, back to the house party again, but blogging is. You are a community and, just like any party, if you are the wallflower or you are the one sitting in the kitchen glugging all the red wine and don’t talk to anybody, you won’t get to have any benefits from that. But if you’re the party goer that goes round, introduces yourself, gets to know people, you actually develop these friendships that are invaluable, you are networking, there’s no doubt about it. So, these friendships have come from healthy networking over the last, oh we’re looking at, nine years, eight or nine years aren’t we? So, that’s where they’ve come from.
And yes, I would say everyone one of those people, can be counted as a friend, albeit virtual since I’ve only met a few of them.
Alison Jones: In real life?
Carol Wyer: Yes.
Alison Jones: This is great because, I think the phrase that Ben Cameron used when he recommended you as a guest, he said you were a great example of someone that knows their audience really well and that you’ve got the ability to go out and do whatever it takes to sell your books and you’re illustrating it beautifully here. What do you think that takes for you as a person?
Carol Wyer: Oh you need an abundance of energy. When I first told my husband I wanted to write and I wanted to be a successful writer, he was a businessman so he knew about these things, he said you do know you’re going to have to be determined, he said. Not just say you’re determined, you’re going to have to be really determined and now as I look back at things I’ve done to get to where I am, I know what he means and he was right. I will work not just days, I will work into the night when I’m writing and editing but also with this whole business of knowing your audience, I do masses of research, absolutely huge amounts of things when I’m writing my books, especially with the non-fiction books.
So, I’m always emailing people, I’m always talking to people online and then with the whole humour thing, when I wrote Grumpy Old Menopause, which won the People’s Book Prize Award, and I was interviewed on BBC Breakfast television with that, in that book I tried to do the things I write about and I was trying to instil confidence into women who were facing the menopause or going through the menopause, at a time when they feel they’ve just lost control of who they are and their bodies. So, I said, well there’s a couple of things you could do because the book’s quite funny and lighthearted and I said, well there’s a few things you could do. You could do pole dancing or you could standup comedy and, at the time I had frozen shoulder so pole dancing was always going to be out for me, I nearly ended up crushing my nose. So, I had a go at standup comedy and the standup comedy brought in other things and other audiences and, again, it increased my audience.
So, I think, and it applies to anybody, business book readers, writers, whatever, if you want to do something and you want to enlarge your audience, don’t be afraid to take a sidestep and have a go at something else as well.
Alison Jones: I’m really interested in the fact that you used humour as well, that’s obviously really important, in fact it’s where you’re going really isn’t it? That’s where you’re focusing on there but the humour, what I’m thinking of is from a writer’s perspective, it allows you to tackle really difficult things, in a really accessible way, you kind of get under the radar somehow, under the wire?
Carol Wyer: This is it, humour is a fantastic medium, you really can do wonders with humour. I learned that very early on, I learned that in my childhood because I’m afraid I was one of those rather ugly children with, well, I had pigtails and I spoke posh, I spoke posher than Miranda Hart at one stage.
Alison Jones: Posher than Miranda Hart? Surely not?
Carol Wyer: I did, because I came from Germany, originally I was born in Germany and I was brought up in Germany and things were very strict over there. You’d curtsey when you saw the headmistress and what-have-you. So, when I came back to the UK, my attitude towards learning was somewhat different to everybody else in my class and they all thought I was hilarious standing up every time a teacher came in and so I had a few troubles and issues at school but I learned to combat that with humour. Having had a rather unfortunate accident with a one-armed bandit that took a dislike to me and smashed my front teeth out, when I was playing it, I really found myself in a position that it was easier to laugh at myself than to have other people laugh at me and that’s when I first learned that humour works.
It works in so many levels, if you laugh at yourself first, it puts people at ease. If you’ve got a tricky subject, it puts people at ease, if you make it humorous. If you want to make a point, you can do it better through humour. So, again, that applies for anything, if you’ve got humour and you know how to use it, it’s a marvellous tool, it really is.
Alison Jones: It’s a big “if” though isn’t it? Because there’s nothing worse than an attempt at humour that just doesn’t quite make it?
Carol Wyer: Ah yes, well that’s unfortunate and some people are just, they find it a little easier don’t they than others? I think that someone like Ben Elton and how he writes, it’s just effortless. Yeah, you have to be a little careful how you use it but I really do believe it, you can learn to be funny.
Alison Jones: Well, I’m wondering about that with the whole standup thing as well, which I have to say, I’m an extrovert but the idea of doing standup makes me just die inside a little, presumably you can learn that skill can you?
Carol Wyer: Oh yeah, definitely. I did. I would say I probably had a headstart because apparently whenever I told a story, usually based on my drunken mother, loads of material there, what with that and my grumpy old husband, it was quite effortless really.
Alison Jones: Quite glad I’m not in your family actually…
Carol Wyer: Quite crazy yes. I’m digressing here now aren’t I?
Alison Jones: That never happens on this programme. Never. The writing thing’s interesting as well because when I talk to most people here, on the show, they aren’t professional writers, they’re business people and the writing is really hard but you’re that rare breed who always wanted to be a writer. What does writing mean to you sort of personally?
Carol Wyer: Well, I’m a much better writer than I am a speaker, I find it’s easier for me to write my emotions and I’m a big observer. I mean, when I do my standup I do observational comedy, but I also observe the darker side of human nature, I’m very interested in that and so, I find writing is very cathartic, that’s the right work isn’t it? (She says, trying to think what’s the right word I want…)
Alison Jones: It’s certainly a good word for it, yeah.
Carol Wyer: Yeah, I think it applies. I find I can express myself much better and I can nail issues much better when I write. Now, it doesn’t have to necessarily just be in a book. One of my short stories, for example, allowed me to express a lot of emotions. Again, some of the articles I write, they’re ways I can express myself a lot better and of course my standup, I have to write reams and reams and reams for a half hour standup. I write more, doing my standup gig than I do when I write a hundred and twenty thousand word novel.
Alison Jones: That’s interesting, is that because of the performance aspect, because it’s got to be distilled down to the laugh?
Carol Wyer: Yes, when I learned to do the standup, I was taken under the wing of somebody called Sooty, who I thought was going to be a little bear puppet but turned out not to be.
Alison Jones: Disappointing.
Carol Wyer: He explained that I needed to write down twenty things that I thought were interesting and then write twenty things about those twenty things and then break those things down until they were just punchlines. You have to work with it so much to distil it, as you say, so that it has certain rhythm, a joke, you have a point where you build people up to think it’s going to go in one direction and then, woof! You hammer them a point. And that’s much the same in writing only it’s more difficult to do that in writing, you have to have a longer lead and, I think again, that’s why I like writing thrillers because I can put in the twists and the surprises and the punches and surprise the audience.
So, the humour does it in one way, I still surprise people and make them laugh but the thriller, that does something else. So, I’ve always wanted to be a writer because, I’m not actually a confident person. I know that sounds crazy given what I’ve done but I hide behind a mask, who doesn’t? She says, being terribly honest for the first time in ages.
Alison Jones: It’s more like therapy this show isn’t it, really, sometimes.
Carol Wyer: It’s Doctor Jones…
Alison Jones: Tell me a little bit more about that. No, I do think that’s fascinating because I think extroverts forget sometimes, or people forget that extroverts, it’s not the same thing as not being shy, you’re getting your energy from other people and you’re enjoying their company and it’s giving you something you need, but it doesn’t mean that you are confident in yourself necessarily. Just as putting yourself forward as the expert writing this book doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t have moments where you think, this is all blindly obvious and everybody’s going to think I’m stupid and what am I saying and nobody’s going to read it. It doesn’t automatically give you that bulletproof confidence so I think it’s good that people talk about that.
Carol Wyer: I think it’s fundamental because when you write, you are on your own, it’s you, it’s your laptop. It’s a very lonely profession, so it’s good to know that other writers go through exactly the same thing and when people are standing up and giving presentations or being interviewed, they’re quaking inside, even these people that sound terribly confident. A lot of them are still quaking inside and I don’t think I’ve ever walked away from an interview, and I have done quite a lot of interviews, I’ve been on television several times, I’ve done over fifty BBC Radio shows, I used to be a loudmouth on BBC Radio Derby, even now I’ll walk away from a show and think, oh I really messed that up. I think that’s the same when you’re writing as well.
So, I think it’s important to know that you’re not alone and you are who you are aren’t you? You can only do your best.
Alison Jones: Absolutely. The other really heartening thing I take from that as well, particularly that point about write twenty things around twenty things about the twenty things and then distil it down to the punchline, is quite often you look at your crappy first draught of whatever you’ve written and then you look at the books on your shelves and you think why am I even bothering? But the crappy first draught is the only way you get to the polished output and it’s important to write the junk because only that way do you get to the good stuff.
Carol Wyer: Exactly, you’re spot on, I mean I’ve currently got about 24 hours to finish doing the structural edits on book four of the series of seven and I’ve got to the point where I’ve unpicked it so much I actually don’t know what the book’s about anymore, I’m distraught and I’ve got to put it all back together again and get it to the editor, a copy editor, for Friday night and there are moments when you think, Oh this isn’t working but it will, it will come together I know it will because I’ve done this so many times now. I know that by the time that book, and I will be sick of that book but the time it’s published, I will never want to read it again, as long as I live, but I know that by the time it gets to that point, it will be as good as it’s going to be and it will be good. You have to take heart in that, you have to believe in that every time.
Alison Jones: I suppose it’s easier when you’ve done it before? It’s a lot harder the first time round so there’s going to be a lot of people here who are in the middle of writing their first book, probably greatly cheered by what we’ve said so far, but what would your best tip for them be?
Carol Wyer: Oh there are several tips, but I think the first thing I would say is to be patient and tenacious and you really are going to need that, once that book’s written don’t think, that’s it, it’s done! Quick, got to get it published. Please don’t do that. I still believe now, I should have waited more months before I published my first book, I think it could have been a much better book if I’d left it six months and gone back to it, even though I still think it was quite good. Don’t rush into it, it’s got to be right because you will look at it again in six months time, or twelve months time and think, do you know, I’m a better writer now than I was then and I could make this better.
Practise your writing yes, go and write something else, write your blog posts, do whatever you think you should do and then go back to it but you will need patience because there will be knock backs, so you also need the third thing and that is self belief.
Alison Jones: Yes, absolutely, that’s really interesting and I’m listening to you and thinking about myself as well because I’ve finished my book in August and I’m now sort of going through and editing it and I’m really resenting it, I’ve finished this I should be able to get it published but I know I’ve done this so many times for other people, I know I have to do this but, oh man it sucks.
Carol Wyer: It’s the worse thing, I hate editing with a passion, I hate it. I mean at the moment I’m very fortunate, as I say, I work with Bookouture who are part of Hachette Group, and we have a closed Facebook group, just for the authors within Bookouture and so when we’re really desperate and we hate our editors and we hate our book and we just hate life, we’ll go into the lounge and say, I hate my book! And someone will say, no it’s alright, you’ll be okay and pat you on the shoulder. Everybody feels the same, editing it sucks big time as you say and especially for me, the last book, I edited it to death and then at the final hurdle, the proofs came through and there were more comments about how it needed to be edited and I felt like saying, do it yourself if you want it better.
Alison Jones: It’s done, okay?
Carol Wyer: I hate this book, get rid of it.
Alison Jones: So, take heart, if you’ve been saying to yourself, I really hate this book, I’m really sick of it then, you know, you are not alone.
Carol Wyer: You’re so not alone.
Alison Jones: So not alone, no I know and it’s important isn’t it, because everybody’s going, oh it’s so exciting, you’ve finished your book and I’m like, yeah, I suppose…
Carol Wyer: There’s this lack of enthusiasm by the end.
Alison Jones: Yeah, really, enough already. Now, I always ask my guests to recommend somebody else as a guest for the show, I’ve had you this way, it’s been terrific. So, who do you think would be a good guest for this show, someone with something interesting to say about writing or the business of business books?
Carol Wyer: I would high recommend a lady called Celia Sawyer, some of your listeners might know of her from a show, they call Four Rooms where there were antique experts that would buy, or offer to buy, articles from people that came into the show but she’s very well known as an interior designer, highly successful businesswoman who’s won awards and took time out of an incredibly busy schedule to read my book, Life Swap, which was the first book I submitted to Bookouture. She read it and she wrote a quote for me so that I could use it on the book and I though that was incredibly kind of her. She has time for anybody that wants to succeed, she offers counselling, well not counselling, more of a course in self awareness and that type of thing as well and she is just an incredible force. I think she’s a tremendous role model for any woman, particularly, who would like to be successful and would like to know or find out more about business. So I’d highly recommend Celia.
Alison Jones: She sounds amazing and I don’t know her at all so thank you, that’s a great recommendation. Wonderful. Now, Carol, if people want to find out more about you or about your books, more about your comedy, where should they go?
Carol Wyer: Oh I’m all over the internet, I’m all over the place. I think if you put my name in, you’d probably find everything but if not, there’s my website which is www.carolwyer.co.uk, you can find one of my blogs, which is grumpyoldmenopause.com.
Alison Jones: Such a good title.
Carol Wyer: Very easy to find and I’m all over Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest and Linkedin and anywhere else you’d care to find me.
Alison Jones: Blimey you weren’t kidding, were you? I’ll put the top few of those in the show notes, so if you want to look at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com you will find them all grouped there for your convenience but thank you so much, I’ve had such a good time today, thank you Carol, really great to talk to you.
Carol Wyer: Alison, it’s been an absolute pleasure, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself, it’s gone far too fast.